Telling The Story Through Education! Tool of Choice: Nature

This week of student teaching is proving to be another valuable learning experience. This online and distance learning can be challenging and the time it takes to prepare lessons that can be accommodating for all can be very time-consuming. But when these lessons are not required by the school and yet, students still log on to do the assignments, definitely make the time commitment worth it. Since COVID-19 was not planned for or expected, student teachers everywhere are missing out on valuable experiences. Penn State has created alternative assignments for us to complete over the next few weeks until our student teaching internship is over. These assignments are an addition to still providing online learning for our students. Some of my alternative assignments that my cooperating teacher, university supervisor, I have come up with are a lot of professional development. Pursuing professional development learning certificates like Google Classroom and Project Learning Tree. I am also taking advantage of the online courses and webinars that Penn State Extension is offering for FREE! This is a great opportunity to learn about content areas that you are familiar with but also content areas that you are unfamiliar with.

This week I listened to two different webinars, Native Plants of Pennsylvania and Best Practices for Hosting a Walk in the Woods. As I listen to two different webinars, I learned that they both have a common trend of asking "How do we make that connection in nature through education?" The key is storytelling. Telling stories that relate back to the students to make those connections. That's a really cool way to think about education. Storytelling happens because it relates to the person that is listening. But what if we made all of education like that? Especially environmental education.

When teaching students about the environment, there are a variety of different contexts that can be used to teach. But it all depends on the audience and the level of prior knowledge that they already have. If you are teaching a group about ecosystems and they have little to no prior knowledge, then you should not be using extensive vocabulary. Because you can lose your audience and lose their interest. If you can match your vocabulary to their prior knowledge, then you can make those connections. Make these storytelling lessons connect and relate to the students.

Storytelling is the key to understanding how ecological functions work because each part plays a role. If you can identify each of those parts in your teaching, then the story can make sense. This can be hard to do in online settings. But it can definitely be done in the classroom and online with working through modules.

This week, I have found more student participation when they were participating in discussion boards. That interaction with other people and everyone meeting at the same area to learn can be a powerful space. Especially in a time where these students haven't interacted with their peers in a month! I would highly recommend discussion boards in modules to help make that connection in you lesson to continue to tell your story through content.